SpectraCell Blog

A vitamin B1 deficiency has been shown to compromise egg cell health in female mice. Even though this study was carried out on mice, the implications for human health and fertility are not lost. Scientists were interested in assessing the effect of mild and severe vitamin B1 (thiamin) deficiency on egg cells and what they found was revealing.

Mice were fed one of two diets: normal or one lacking in vitamin B1. Not surprisingly, the vitamin B1 concentration in the ovaries of mice not given vitamin B1 was much lower than that of mice fed B1. Since the major source of cellular energy in oocytes (immature egg cells) comes from a compound (pyruvic acid) that is metabolized by a vitamin B1-dependent enzyme, researchers wanted to investigate the impact of B1 deficiency on egg cell development.

If the vitamin B1 deficiency was “mild” (not severe enough to cause weight loss), the mice ovaries produced egg cells that were normal. However, if B1 deficiency reached severe levels, then their ovaries would produce abnormal egg cells more often: 44% of eggs from severely deficient animals were abnormal, compared to only 14% of eggs from mice with adequate B1. Furthermore, once the mice returned to a vitamin B1-containing diet, the level of abnormal egg cells dropped from 44% to 23%, suggesting that egg cell damage may occur as the cell matures but not in its immature stage.

For more details on the cited paper, click here for a link to the abstract, “Effects of Mild and Severe Vitamin B1 Deficiencies on the Meiotic Maturation of Mice Oocytes,” published in the March 2017 issue of Nutrition and Metabolic Insights. For a copy of the full paper, click here.